Those Left Behind
by Emma Arthur
Summary: Jake freezes in place as his opponent starts to turn toward him. His face is obscured by his long hair, but he doesn't even look out of breath. Jake's own breath hitches when the man looks up. He knows that face. "Eliot?" he asks slowly, unable to believe it himself. But it is him. Behind the long hair is the same face Jake sees in the mirror every morning. The face o
1. Chapter 1

I've decided to keep up with the long standing tradition (of last year) to post on my and CK's birthday.

This is the beginning of a multi-chapter fic, based on the Horns of Dilemna, in which the Leverage team crashes in the middle of the case. It has, so far, four finished chapters and it will be at least five chapters long.

It is set in the same AU as my other stories Every Chance We Get and A Place We Can Share. Since a lot of this is from Jake's point of view, and he is discovering things at the same time as the reader, you don't actually need to read those first to understand.

It's quite a bit further along in the AU than Every Chance We Get, but you can assume that things that happened on the show mostly apply here as well. I had planned to write up other one-shots and episode coda that happen earlier first, but I guess my muse decided otherwise.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

As he watches her walk away, Jake hopes that Baird is making the right call by going into the server room alone and leaving them to go to Human Resources. Splitting up doesn't sound like a particularly good idea to him. He doesn't like the looks Golden Axe's CEO kept giving him throughout their talk in her office, and he is certain that she and her assistant lied through their teeth all along. But why did they focus on him so much, when Baird was the one talking?

"I'll wait for your friend," Franklin, the assistant, says when they get to the elevator. "Room 014. Go left, left and right."

Jake starts to walk into the elevator, but a hand on his shoulder stops him. Turning back, he sees Franklin give him a shake of his head. "You're coming with me," he says as the doors to the elevator close on Jones and Cassandra.

Jake tries to get out of Franklin's grasp, but it's too strong. He feels something hard bump his side, and looks down to see the barrel of a gun. He freezes.

"What−" he starts, but the man just gives him a shove toward the end of the corridor. He pushes Jake into what looks like a storeroom−but a storeroom with a reinforced steel door. Jake only has time to see metal shelves filled with boxes before he is thrown into one of them and crashes on the floor.

"Where did your friend go? Who else is there?" Franklin growls, waving the gun toward him. Jake looks around him for a way out, but nothing jumps at him. The room is small and has no other exit than the one Franklin is standing in.

"We have your...brother? The one who looks like you. Your friends are down in the labyrinth, and they won't be coming out anytime soon. Who else is there?"

"No one!" Jake shouts when it becomes evident Franklin is getting impatient for an answer. He has no idea what the man is talking about, but he does have a gun pointed at his head.

Franklin turns his head suddenly, as if hearing something in the corridor. Seconds later he is flying through the room, and his gun slides on the floor to somewhere under the shelves. Jake scrambles backward as quickly as he can, further away from where Franklin is fighting another man.

Before Jake can even stand up, Franklin crumbles on the ground, unconscious. Jake freezes in place as his opponent starts to turn toward him. His face is obscured by his long hair, but he doesn't even look out of breath.

Jake's own breath hitches when the man looks up. He knows that face.

"Eliot?" he asks slowly, unable to believe it himself. But it is him. Behind the long hair is the same face Jake sees in the mirror every morning. The face of the twin he hasn't seen in fifteen years.

Eliot frowns, still not quite looking at him. "Jake?"

"What are you doing here?" Jake asks. There are many other questions rushing in his mind, but this is the first he manages to ask.

"Eliot, we need to go," a voice says from the corridor. A blond woman sticks her head into the room, and meets Jake's eyes. Blinking, she looks back and forth between him and Eliot. "Oh. Why are there two of you?"

"Parker," Eliot says. "This is my twin brother Jacob. Jake, Parker is part of my crew."

Jake nods vaguely at the woman, still lost in the fact that Eliot is even here.

"You have a twin?" Parker asks. She pauses for a second, as if listening to something Jake can't hear. "Eliot, we really need to go. There's a bunch of security guys coming up."

Eliot starts moving. "Jake, you're coming with us. Come on," he says, walking out of the room.

"Wait! My colleagues are here too. I need to warn them!" Jake exclaims when he finally manages to take his eyes off Eliot. Baird is still in the server room, and Jones and Cassandra have gone down somewhere. He can't just leave them hanging if they're in danger.

"No time!" Parker says. She's right, Jake can hear people running down the next corridor.

"You can call them once we're out, but for now they'll have to handle themselves," Eliot says.

Parker takes the lead, Eliot's hand on her arm. Once they reach the stairs, Eliot says, "Front entrance is out, it's the first thing they'll have secured. Parker, you've got some rigs?"

"Of course," Parker says.

"Then let's go up."

Jake stalls at that. "What? Aren't we gonna end up trapped?"

"We're already trapped," Eliot says. "Roof's our only way out."

"But how?" Jake asks.

Neither of the two answer, instead starting up the stairs. Deciding his only option is to trust them, Jake follows.

They don't encounter anyone on the way up, and Jake is the only one out of breath when they come out onto the roof.

"This is going to be a little tricky," Parker says as she starts pulling things out of her backpack. "I only planned for the two of us, so I only have two rigs. Jacob, have you ever done rappelling?"

"Some, but only in mountains. Wait, you want us to jump?"

"Eliot," Parker says, ignoring him. "You have more experience than him, so I'm going to give him your harness, it should fit him just fine. You put on mine, I'll adjust it for you, and I'll just hold on to you."

"Fine," Eliot says, looking unperturbed.

Jake looks at him aghast. "That sounds really dangerous," he says, trying to keep himself from panicking. Have they gone crazy?

"Don't worry, Parker knows what she's doing," Eliot says to him, taking the harness Parker is shoving into his hands. He fiddles with it without looking at it, turning it in his hands, then he starts to pull it on.

Jake frowns, watching him. Eliot looks fit and healthy, much more than Jake ever will be. He's bulkier than he used to be, but it's all muscle. His moves are as graceful as always, and he holds himself with that quiet confidence Jake never quite managed. But there is something off about him that Jake can't put his finger on.

He doesn't notice Parker throwing a harness at him until it hits him right in the face. "Hey!" he yells.

Parker laughs, "Eliot number two doesn't have reflexes!" she exclaims triumphantly.

Jake grumbles as he untangles himself from the harness and figures out how to put it on. Who does she think she is?

She adjusts Eliot's harness with expert hands, then Jake's, pulling the straps tightly around his torso. Jake really hopes that Eliot is right and she know what she is doing.

"Okay, when you're ready, you're going first," she says as she attaches him to the rope now secured to the roof.

"I'm not ready," Jake says.

"Well, you better be soon, because we're running out of time!"

At that moment, the staircase's door opens and armed men come running out. "Great," Jake murmurs, stepping closer to the edge. He forbids himself firmly from looking down, and jumps.

He only just hears Parker's shout of delight over the rush of wind as the three of them go down side by side.

When they slow down and eventually stop going down, ten feet above ground, Parker talks him through giving the rope enough slack to take him the rest of the way down. She herself lets go of Eliot to land lightly on the sidewalk below them.

"That was...intense," Jake says as his feet touch down, trying to catch his breath.

"You okay?" Eliot asks, the smirk on his face tainted by a touch of worry.

"Yeah. It was kinda fun, actually."

Parker is already pulling the harness off him. "Of course it was. Now we need to keep moving," she says. "Come on."

She leads them to a silver van in a side street two blocks away. "Hardison, we're here," she says seemingly to no one.

The back door to the van opens, revealing an open space filled with more electronics than Jake has ever seen. A young black man ushers them in, pausing only to stare at Jake.

"Wow," he says. "I see what you mean, Parker. So you're Eliot's brother?"

"Hardison, this is Jake. Jake, Hardison is the other member of our crew. He's a hacker."

"Nice to meet you," Jake says, climbing into the van and shaking the man's hand. Hardison gives him a nod, still staring, then turns away to slide into the driver's seat. "Let's get out of here," he says.

* * *

Eliot sits down on the van's bench beside Jake, leaving Parker to take the passenger seat up front. He is still reeling from the way events have unfolded. Having to pull out in a hurry because they got made is annoying, but salvageable. But finding his brother, the brother he left behind in Oklahoma fifteen years ago, in the middle of a job in Boston? That's a whole other story.

It's not that they're really estranged. Born eleven minutes apart, they've always had a bond stronger than anything Eliot has ever experienced with another human being. He tried, really tried, to stay away from Jake, for his own protection, back when his life turned on its head and he ended up in a world of darkness and crime. For four years, he let his brother think he was dead.

And when he cracked and finally called Jake, with the firm intention of it being the last time he ever heard his brother's voice, he was unable to let him go. That was just months before Chapman caught up with him in Los Angeles.

In the eleven years since, they've stayed in touch over the phone. Eliot promised himself never to put Jake in danger because of his job, and until today he's succeeded. He distanced himself from his family so long ago, abandoning his birth name and cleaning his record, that no one ever found them, not even Hardison. And now Jake is here, chased after by the security of the decidedly dodgy company they have been working for weeks. Jake, who's supposed to be working at their father's pipeline company in Oklahoma.

Jake, who doesn't know Eliot is blind.

Eliot flexes his left hand in a familiar move. He can hear Jake fiddling with his cuff beside him, one of his telltale anxious stims. Eliot is briefly amazed that he can still recognize that after all this time and a dramatic change of perception, but he can almost see it in his mind's eye, better than he has seen anything in years.

Which brings him back to his problem, the one tying knots in his stomach. He didn't mean to hide his accident from Jake, not really. Well, that's a lie. But back when it happened, when Eliot called Jake for the first time after being rescued from captivity, he found himself unable to speak about what happened. It's not like Jake could have done anything from several states away, when Eliot refused to tell him where he was, anyway.

And he's never found a way to tell him since.

"What the hell are you doing in Boston?" he asks finally, preferring to attack rather than wait for questions. He's fairly sure Jake hasn't noticed yet, but he's bound to figure it out soon, and Eliot can't hide it forever.

He tries to squash down the fear in his stomach.

"Working. What are _you_ doing here?" Jake fires back.

Eliot can tell this is going nowhere and decides to wait until they're back at the hotel. He shakes his head, ignoring the question.

"It's good to see you," he says instead, his voice barely above a whisper. He carefully doesn't think about how that's technically a lie.

A bump in the road brings them closer, almost touching. Jake makes a noise with his throat and Eliot feels his hand grab his arm suddenly. He moves so their hands grasp and squeezes.

They stay silent for a moment, until Parker calls from the front of the van. "We're almost there!"

The van pulls up close to the hotel almost as she says it. Hardison and Parker get out of the front, and Eliot gets to his feet. He doesn't try to hide his slight fumbling for the back door handle, but he doesn't go as far as pulling out his cane. He's not ready yet.

Jake walks out behind him. Eliot takes a second to orient himself, the noise around him telling him they're parked a block away from the hotel, in front of the small café they've gotten breakfast from the last few days. Parker taps the back of his hand to guide him, but he pushes her away and follows Hardison's footsteps instead.

He curses himself silently when he realizes what he's doing. He doesn't actually want to hide his blindness from Jake, he just dreads his reaction so much that he's subconsciously trying to push the moment back for as long as possible.

"I really need to call my colleagues and warn them," Jake says once they're standing in the hotel suite.

Eliot nods, saving his questions for later. "Over here," he says, showing Jake to his bedroom. Jake walks in and closes the door behind him.

Eliot pulls off his jacket and drapes it over the back of a chair, and plops down into an armchair, kicking his shoes and losing his tie. He almost unconsciously pulls his legs up, which he only does when he's tense−or completely relaxed.

"A twin brother, Eliot? How come you never talked about him?" Hardison asks, sitting on the couch, already typing on his keyboard. Parker joins him shortly.

"You okay?" she asks.

Eliot nods toward her with a tight smile. She may seem clueless about human relationships, but she's always been the best at gauging his mood.

"Never really came up. I'm sure I mentioned him a few time," he evades. Of course that's not what Hardison is really asking.

"I knew you had a brother," Parker says. "Just not that he's your twin."

"There's no record of a brother in your files," Hardison says.

"No, of course not. With the life I've had, you think I didn't take precautions to protect my family?" Eliot hesitates for a moment, but Hardison will go looking whatever he does. It might as well be in the right direction. "Look for Jacob Stone," he says. "Born in Oklahoma City, June 27, 1977."

"That's your birth date," Parker observes.

"Twin brother, Parker."

"Yes, but your last names are different," she says.

"I changed mine after I left home," Eliot answers. "Eliot Stone is my birth name."

"Eliot Stone," Parker repeats, as if trying it out. "I like Spencer better. But it has a nice ring to it."

"Eliot Spencer is an alias?" Hardison asks. "Then it's really good. I couldn't tell, which means it's, like, as good as CIA IDs."

"That's because it is one," Eliot says. "It's the ID the CIA set up for me to infiltrate Moreau's ranks. They completely erased my records from before, so they couldn't blow it when I left them. After that it was easier to keep it."

"Even when Moreau was after you? I always wondered why you didn't just disappear and make a new life somewhere."

"With the resources he had, he would have found me eventually. It was better to use my name to find a way to bring him down. After this," Eliot waves a hand toward his eyes, "he told me himself he would leave me alone, and I'd already made a name for myself in the retrieval business, so I kept the alias."

"It says here Eliot Stone was killed in action in Afghanistan in 1998," Hardison says.

Eliot listens for a second, making sure Jake is still talking on the phone in the next room.

"Yeah. That's what I meant when I said they erased my records. Jake is the only member of my family who knows I'm alive."

* * *

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please tell me what you thought, and how you think it's going to go. Eliot and Jake have a lot to tell each other...

Updates should be coming more regularly than every six months this time!

I have a Tumblr (theemmaarthur) if you want to keep up and interact, though reviews are nice too ;)


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2, in which Jake discovers some things about Eliot and misses some other things completely.

* * *

"So you found Dedalus's Labyrinth under a Boston skyscraper _and_ you fought the Minotaur? Why am I missing out on all the fun?" Jake rants at Baird over the phone, pacing around the bedroom Eliot showed him to. Baird and the others have made it back to the Library, thanks to Jenkins, and Jake is on speaker phone with them trying to figure out what is going on. He would have come back as well, but losing Eliot and his crew to find the back door would have been impossible, and Jake doesn't want to lose track of Eliot just yet anyway. There's too much of a risk that if he does, he won't see his brother again.

"Alright, we need to get that thread," he says. "I'll try to smooth things out on my end, and I'll meet you outside Golden Axe, okay?"

"How long do you need?" Baird asks.

"I don't know. I need to figure out what my brother was doing in the building, and what he knows or doesn't know about this whole mess. Actually, how about you go on ahead? Now that we know what we need to do, I'm not going to be of much use anyway."

"That, and they're probably still looking for you," Jones says. "They think we're still in the labyrinth, but they know Stone escaped. They see your face, they're not going to hesitate to bring you down."

"Gee, thanks," Jake says, but Jones is right. Especially since if he understood this right, his face, or rather his resemblance with Eliot, is part of what tipped them off. "Just keep me posted, and I'll tell you how it goes here."

"See you later, then," Baird says.

"Good luck," Jake hangs up.

He takes a deep breath and walks back out into the hotel suite's lounging room. This case they were so eager to work on has become a mess very quickly. And Eliot coming up in the middle of it…

Jake closes the door behind him and looks around. Eliot is sitting in an armchair, his legs tucked under him, fiddling absently with a beaded leather bracelet on his wrist. He is still wearing the same suit, but he has lost the tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. Parker sits cross-legged on the couch beside Hardison, whom Jake has figured out she is dating. Hardison has connected his little wireless keyboard to the TV, but he scrambles to shut off the screen when Jake comes in, and interrupts whatever he is saying.

"I think we all have some explaining to do," Jake says, going to sit in the second armchair. "Want to start with what you were doing at Golden Axe?"

"We could ask you the same question," Eliot says. He is guarded, tentative. Jake reflects that this isn't quite how he imagined they would meet again for the first time. In his mind, it was far more effusive, with an embrace and laughs and maybe a few tears. But then, they seem to have been both taken by surprise.

The truth is, even if he imagined it often, Jake had given up hope of ever seeing Eliot again.

They have been talking on the phone regularly for a long time, and they've been closer in the last few years than ever since Eliot enlisted, but Eliot has always made it clear that he doesn't want Jake involved in his life. He doesn't even know where Eliot lives, these days.

"I asked first," Jake teases, but with an undercurrent of tension. The situation is delicate. Beyond their personal problems, there is still the fact that Eliot and his crew are somehow involved in Golden Axe's dodgy business, and that Jake doesn't know how much they know about it, or what their intentions are. He trusts Eliot with his life, even after all these years, but he also knows Eliot's crew doesn't often stay on the right side of legality.

Parker and Hardison look at Eliot, waiting for him to react. Eliot is still not quite meeting Jake's eyes, but he seems to be assessing him. "I've told you a little about what we do," he says.

"You never told us you have a twin, but you've told him about us?" Hardison asks incredulously.

"Only the basics, nothing dangerous," Eliot says.

Hardison looks unhappy, but he lets it go.

"Our client's son went missing five weeks ago, after coming to Boston for an internship. We traced it back to Golden Axe, so we went in to try and find out what happened," Eliot continues.

"Is this the kind of cases you normally take?" Jake asks with a frown. It sounds like they have stumbled upon one of the sacrificed interns.

"No, but the client is a friend of a friend. Parker was posing as a new intern, and me as an auditor. Now why were you there? Last I heard you were still working on the pipeline in Oklahoma."

Jake considers for a moment. What can he tell them without talking about the Library? If Parker was posing as an intern, she would have been the next sacrifice, which means she's still in danger.

"I have a new job," he starts, then pauses again. He doesn't have a proper cover story, and he is a terrible liar. Eliot is going to see right through anything he says. "I work for...a library," he finished lamely.

Eliot raises an eyebrow.

"Hardison?" he says, without turning his head.

"You sure?" Hardison asks.

"Run it."

"Okay." Hardison types something on his keyboard, and the TV screen comes back to life. It displays a picture of Jake's driver license, and a bunch of other documents, all pertaining to Jake's recent life. "Jacob Stone. Up until a month ago, you were working for an oil rigging company in Oklahoma, while secretly writing academic articles on art history under..." Hardison trails off for a moment, looking rapidly through a bunch of files. "Seven aliases? Seriously? That's overkill, man. Even we rarely have that many active at the same time. Anyway, your passport was flagged on a bunch of flights back and forth to Europe during the same week last month, and a week after that you quit you job and left your house. I have no record of a new job, but a substantial amount of money appeared on your bank account just after you left Oklahoma, and you had your mail forwarded to an address in...Portland, Oregon?"

Jake stares at him, aghast. Jones has proved he is a very good hacker, but this guy is working in another league altogether, if he pulled that out in the time it took Jake to call his colleagues.

"Seriously?" Eliot asks with a small laugh. "You moved to _Portland_?"

Jake nods. Eliot doesn't react, seemingly still waiting for his answer.

"Yeah," Jake says. "Why?"

"That's where we're based," Eliot says.

"Really? That's one hell of a coincidence," Jake says. It's also a complication. He may be secretly glad this means they will probably see each other again, but Jake doesn't really know how to explain he works for a library whose entrance is under a bridge.

That's when he comes to a decision. He's not supposed to tell anyone about the Library, but there are too many concurrent factors here to ignore. And Jake so badly _wants_ to tell Eliot. Share everything, like when they were children.

Like they have not done in twenty years.

Now he just needs to get Eliot to believe him.

"Have you ever heard of the Library?" he asks.

"What do you mean, the library?" Hardison says. But Eliot and Parker have both frozen in their seats, clear recognition on their face.

"You're the Librarian?" Eliot asks. He doesn't look happy about it.

"There's several of us now. Well, Flynn has the title, I guess." Jake interrupts himself before he goes into technicalities. They don't really matter right now.

What matters is that Eliot already knew.

"How do you−" he starts.

"I came across a Librarian about twelve years ago. Didn't end well," Eliot says.

"I tried to steal a Welsh crown once," Parker says. "But someone took it first, so I followed him to the Metropolitan Library in New York. I hitched a ride on the elevator, and it went really, really far down, and came out in a big room full of bookshelves and shiny old things."

Jake gapes at her. She managed to get into the library unnoticed and not get caught, and what she has to say about it is that it's full of 'shiny old things'? Eliot told him he has a very good thief on his crew, and few things surprise Jake now that he had met Jones, but Parker really is something else.

Even Eliot is frowning at Parker. Hardison just looks lost.

"Somebody wants to tell me what's going on?"

Eliot seems to realize something and he lets out a barking laugh. "I can't believe with all your talk about trolls and mages that you're the only one who doesn't know!" he says.

"Know what?"

"That magic exists!" Eliot snorts.

"What?"

"Yeah," Jake says. "And the Library is there to protect the world from the people who want to use it for their own goals."

"What?" Hardison says again, freaking out. "There's rumors all over the darknet, but you're telling me it's _real_? Like, really real?"

"Yeah, it is," Jake answers, almost proudly, until he realizes that both Eliot and Parker knew _before_ he did. He frowns and comes back to the matter at hand. "Golden Axe has been sacrificing people for millenia. They have Dedalus's labyrinth under the building, and the Minotaur. My colleagues had to fight it to get out."

"Damn," Eliot says. "Something tells me the Minotaur is harder to beat than your average security guard."

"You could say that. Baird said bullets didn't seem to affect it, and it's ten feet tall."

"How did they escape?" Parker asks.

"We have a magic door," Jake says with a smirk. "Opens anywhere in the world to take us back to our base."

He doesn't mention that Jenkins only got the door working this morning or that their base is not, technically, in the Library itself, because they lost the Library three weeks ago. They don't need to know that. Not yet, anyway.

"They're going back in now," he adds. "We've figured out that the Labyrinth is powered by the thread of Ariadne, which is in the building's server room. Which isn't a server room at all, by the way."

"We know," Parker says. "I lifted an access card on my first day there. It's full of really old art and stuff. I wish we had Sophie to tell us what it's worth, because I've never seen anything like it. Looked kind of like what's in that Library of yours."

"Did you see a big ball of thread?" Jake asks. If Parker has already been in the room, she might be able to go back undetected, which is more than he can say for Baird and the others. "And who's Sophie?"

"Sophie was our grifter and art specialist," Eliot answers. "She and Nate retired from the crew a while ago."

"Yes, I saw it," Parker says at the same time. "Great big ball of thread looking completely out of place. What does it do?"

"Wait, what's her full name?" Jake asks Eliot, having a hunch. Eliot talked to him about the members of his crew before, but never by name.

"Sophie Devereaux, why?"

"_The_ Sophie Devereaux? The famous art thief? The one who stole Klimt's _Portrait of a Lady_?"

"You know her?" Eliot asks, shocked.

"Only by reputation. She's made quite a name for herself in the art world."

"She's one of the best," Hardison says, almost proudly. Eliot smiles briefly, but he looks disturbed that Jake has connections to his world.

"To get back to the thread, it looks like it's the artifact anchoring the Labyrinth and the Minotaur in Boston," Jake says. He digs his phone out of his pocket, a bit worried that he hasn't heard anything from his co-workers yet. "So we need to take it out of the building and bring it back to the Library."

"What is it that they did to the missing interns, exactly?" Hardison asks.

Jake winces. "We believe they sacrifice them to the Minotaur. The original myths talks of the sacrifice of seven male and seven female virgins. They've interpreted that to mean interns in the modern day."

"Damn," Eliot says. Hardison grasps Parker's hand in his, and she doesn't move even though she looks like she wants to squirm out.

"Yeah, maybe your cover wasn't the best idea," Jake tells Parker with a grimace.

At the same moment, his phone starts ringing.

"Baird?" he asks, answering the call.

"Yeah. Listen, it looks like we're back in the Labyrinth. Or maybe we never got out, I don't know, but we're definitely not in Boston."

Jake sighs and listens to her explanation of Jenkins' and Cassandra's theories.

"Right. So either you get to the center of the Labyrinth before the Minotaur finds you, or we take over on our end, is that right?" he summarizes when she's done, for the benefit of the other people in the room.

"Pretty much. But I don't think I can fight the Minotaur on my own, and there's no way we can outrun it."

"Can you distract it until we get you out?"

"Maybe," Baird says. "You're still with your brother?"

"Yeah. I think we can get a key card and get to the thread, though we'll need a little time," Jake answers, looking at Eliot for confirmation. Eliot and Parker both nod toward him.

"Great. Wait, what exactly did you say your brother does?"

Jake chuckles. "That's a conversation for when we have more time. I'll keep you posted," he says, hanging up.

"You guys are okay to help out?" he asks Parker and Hardison. From their expression, their decision is already made, but it never hurts to ask. Eliot is already putting his shoes back on.

"It's our job too," Hardison says. "Doesn't usually involves Minotaurs, but it should be an interesting novelty, right?"

Parker nods enthusiastically. Jake shakes his head at their antics.

"Parker, did you say you stole a key card on your first day? Do you still have it?"

"No, I put it back," Parker says.

"It shouldn't be too hard to get another one," Eliot adds. "Parker, can you handle it?"

"Sure, I'll go back as Intern Parker. She's a fun person to be anyway, and I don't think she's been burned."

"Good. Be careful, though, if what Jake said is true, you might be in actual danger. Keep your comm on and bail at the first sign of trouble, okay?"

"Fine," Parker says.

Jake watches their exchange carefully. They're not even looking at each other as they speak, but there is real concern and tenderness in Eliot's voice, and the slightly petulant edge to Parker's words is clearly just for show. Hardison is still typing on his keyboard, but Jake can tell he's listening closely. These people look up to Eliot, wait for his cues and want him to lead their little crew.

Jake tries to imagine his own team in a few years. Will they be this close, this attuned to each other? Will they even last long enough to form a real friendship, or will the group explode before they learn to work together? Given Jones's insufferable personality, Cassandra's betrayal, and Jake's own feelings of inadequacy, he's not sure they'll make it through this one case, let alone countless others.

They definitely won't if they're eaten by the Minotaur, Jake shakes himself. Now is not the time for aimless reflection.

Eliot is already at the door, ready to go back out. He seems hesitant for an instant, then Parker is at his side and she casually slips her hand into his. Jake eyes Hardison, who is right behind them, but he doesn't seem bothered by his girlfriend being this intimate with another man. He shrugs and follows them out the door.

* * *

I hope you liked it!

I've finished writing this story, and there will be five chapters all in all. I'll post the remaining over the next few weeks, and then I should be able to start posting another fic in this AU right away.

Please tell me what you've liked in this chapter! And how do you think Eliot's blindness will come out?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3, in which we get some action.

* * *

Hardison takes the wheel of the van again for the five minutes drive back to Golden Axe. He drops Eliot, Jake and Parker off behind the building, in front of a service entrance. He stays in the van, but disables the electronic lock for them.

Eliot ushers Jake into the empty corridor. "We need to stay out of sight," he says. "All of security probably knows our faces, though regular employees should be safe."

Parker is already at the elevator, checking that it's empty before she waves them in. The ride up to the fifth floor is short, but they have to hide hurriedly when the doors open into the busy corridor where several security guards are still posted.

"Security," Parker says, shoving Jake back into the car. "Two men."

"Get them away from here," Eliot hisses, his face hidden behind his hair.

Parker walks out and casually heads toward the guards, who are talking between themselves.

"Are you still looking for the men you were chasing before?" she asks loudly when she gets close to them. "Brown hair, look like twins? Because I think I just saw them in the northern corridor over there."

The guards look at each other, unsure what to do.

"Come on!" Parker says. "I'll show you where it was."

She puts herself between them and takes their arms, so that they both have to go where she leads them. Jake watches her lift one of their badges, so quickly he would have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention. She points again, still chatting loudly, getting both men to turn away from the elevator, which gives Jake and Eliot a chance to come out unseen and start walking the other way.

"Server room," Eliot says. "She'll meet us there."

Jake tries to avoid the employees' gazes, almost hugging the walls, but Eliot stops him with a hand on his elbow. "Not like that. Look casual, like you have every right to be here."

Jake does his best to relax and look more confident. "That's it," Eliot says, though he doesn't let go of his arm. Jake tries to remember the path Franklin led them through and stops at what he thinks is the last turn before the corridor where they saw the guarded door. When Eliot stays one step behind, he goes ahead and peeks past the corner.

"There's two guards at the door," he says. "How do we get past them?"

"That depends. What happens once you find the thread?"

"I'm not sure. Given what the myth tells us, I'm guessing unraveling it will be the key to destroying the Labyrinth, but I'm not sure how to do that. Or what will happen to the others if they're still inside."

"So basically, we need to get the thread and get out of here with it before we figure out what to do, right?" Eliot asks.

"Yeah," Jake answers.

"I've got the key card," Parker singsongs behind him, making him jump.

"Good," Eliot says, without turning toward her. "What can you tell me about the guards?"

Jake frowns, not understanding why Eliot doesn't just look for himself, but Parker just shoves him back to take a peek of her own.

"Two men, on each side of the door, in suits, carrying concealed weapons," she says.

Eliot nods. "Get Jake inside, take whatever he tells you to," he tells Parker.

"What are you gonna do?" Jake asks.

Eliot smirks and pushes past him. Jake barely has time to blink before he's covered the distance to the guards. He rams at full speed into the closest man, tackling him before throwing a punch at the second guard, who reacted to his colleague going down by going for his gun. Eliot knocks the gun right out of his hand and has him out with one more blow to the head. Jake watches in fascination as he turns back to the other guard, who is getting up again.

Parker's small hand grabs Jake's wrist, making him flinch as his concentration is elsewhere. "Come on," she says, dragging him though the corridor. She only stops briefly to step over the fallen man and swipe the key card. "We're going in," she says in Eliot's direction.

Once inside, Jake almost forgets their precarious situation. The room is full of some of the most ancient art he's ever heard of, objects that by all rights shouldn't even exist. He goes from one display case to the next, getting more excited with each new piece, until he comes across the ball of thread and remembers why they're here.

Looking up, Jake sees Parker busy studying the cases. "Can you get the thread?" he asks, hoping against reason that the rest of this art will not be destroyed when the Labyrinth disappears.

"Should not take more than a few minutes," Parker says, walking over to the electrical board.

"Great."

Jake gives one more longing look to the beautiful ancient painting on the far wall, then heads back to the door, where he can still hear Eliot fighting.

Four more guards have joined the first two, who are both lying on the floor. Eliot is fighting two men at the same time, while another is trying to catch his breath against the wall and the last is aiming his gun at Eliot from further down the corridor. Jake can easily see why he's not shooting yet, as he has no angle that wouldn't risk hitting one of his colleagues, but he will shoot the moment he has an opening.

Eliot doesn't look like he's tiring yet, his moves incredibly graceful. He is so much faster and deadlier than Jake remembers from his high school wrestling days. Jake isn't sure Eliot has noticed the armed guard until he sends one of his opponents barreling right into him with a high speed punch, making the man loose his aim and almost drop his gun.

Eliot jumps on him, kicking the gun out of his hand and wrestling him to the ground. Jake sees the last standing man, whom Eliot just turn his back to, prepare to strike him from behind and he reacts on instinct, throwing a punch at him.

It doesn't have anywhere near the precision of Eliot's blows, and only serves to get the man to turn toward Jake and engage him. Jake manages to deflect the first punch, though the next glances his jaw and he grunts at the pain. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eliot disentangle himself from his now unconscious opponent and start to come back toward them, only to freeze when he hears Jake's groan.

"No!" Parker shouts from behind Jake. He narrowly avoids yet another punch, but the fist coming toward him is suddenly jerked away, as Parker jumps on the man and catches him in a choke-hold. She only releases him when the man falls to the floor, loosing consciousness.

There are a few long seconds of stillness, during which Jake stares at Eliot, who is looking somewhere over his right shoulder. Parker breaks the silence by springing back to her feet. "You good?" she asks Jake.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jake answers. Eliot starts to breathe again at the words, coming closer. "You shouldn't have done that," he tells Jake, looking disturbed.

Jake bristles. "I was just trying to help!"

Eliot shakes his head, looking pained, and Parker lets out a small sound of realization.

"Eliot−" she starts.

"Later, Parker. We need to get out of here. You got the thread?"

"It's unlocked, just need to grab it," Parker answers, slipping back through the door. Jake follows her and she suddenly throws him the ball of thread. Only pure reflex let Jake catch it, which suddenly gives him an idea. "Unravel the thread," he mutters. "Beat the Labyrinth like Ariadne did. Give me a minute," he adds, louder, for Eliot and Parker.

He takes out his phone and calls Baird again. Cassandra is the one who answers, and he can hear fighting sounds in the background.

"Cassandra? What's happening?"

"Colonel Baird is still trying to hold off the Minotaur, but he won't let go. Do you have the thread?" she answers.

"Yes," Jake says. "Can you get back to the Library?"

"I think so! We're not far from the door, but I have to calculate how to get back despite the Labyrinth warping our sense of direction−"

"Get on it! And leave the door open behind you." If Jake's suspicion is true, they are going to need it.

"Okay, we're out," Cassandra says after a while. "I mean, we're still in the Labyrinth, but also in the Library, so I guess this qualifies as out."

"Cassandra, it's not the time for this," Jake snaps, and he immediately hates himself. Cassandra may have betrayed them, but she doesn't deserve to be snapped at for this. He doesn't apologize, though.

"Hey, calm down!" she blurts out, sounding just as annoyed. "You've been on my case non-stop since we started!"

"Not now, Cassandra," Jake says, trying to keep his voice calm. They have at best a few minutes until more security guards show up, and he really doesn't want to have that conversation with Cassandra in front of Eliot.

"I know I betrayed you that first time," she continues anyway. "I was scared. I've a death sentence inside my head and they offered me a cure, so what was I supposed to do?"

"Not sell us out!" Jake can't help being drawn in.

"So self-righteous," Cassandra spits out. "'Look at me and all I've sacrificed, I'm such a good boy.'"

"Well, I take my responsibilities seriously," Jake says, really grateful that he didn't put her on speakerphone. This is the last thing he wants Eliot to hear right now. He doesn't want to be in this argument at all, but now, seeing his brother again after so long, the brother who left when Jake stayed...

"And you made your bed. I didn't get a choice in mine. You don't get to judge me for−"

"Incoming!" Parker yells from the door. "We need to go."

Hanging up the phone without another word, Jake turns to Parker and Eliot. "Guys, I'm gonna need you to hold onto me while I unravel the thread. It might get a little bumpy."

"What do you mean?" Eliot asks.

"It should erase the Labyrinth from existence. The thing is, we have to do it from this room, in the center of the Labyrinth, so we'll be ejected from here one way or another."

"Oh," Parker says. Eliot just frowns, tense, and grabs his elbow.

Jake gives one last forlorn look at the priceless Minoan artifacts around them, which he is fairly sure won't make it back with them. He doesn't give himself time to think of what will happen if he is wrong in his hypothesis and throws the ball of thread down the corridor, only keeping one end in his hand.

The ride is not exactly bumpy, but it's terrifying. Jake briefly feels dragged forward by the thread, then it's like a very long jump into a void. It's nothing like jumping from the roof of a skyscraper, though Parker seems to enjoy it just as much, and it feels like hours before Jake ends up on his knees inside the Annex, Eliot falling on him, under the worried stares of the other Librarians. Baird and Jenkins are getting back up themselves, holding the ball of thread.

"We made it!" Jake exclaims, relieved.

"Yeah, we did," Baird says.

"That was fun," Parker laughs, rocking on the balls of her feet. "Do you guys get to do this everyday?"

Jake turns to her in amazement, followed by everybody else in the room. Eliot just smiles, amused.

"Guys," Jake says, "This is my brother Eliot and his friend Parker."

"There's something wrong with you," Jones mutters toward Parker.

Jake can see out of the corner of his eyes Eliot's hands briefly turn into fists, and his protective step toward Parker.

"Hey!" Parker exclaims. "Only Eliot is allowed to say that!"

"Stone, you told them about the Library?" Baird asks, frowning.

"Yeah, I thought they could help. And they already knew, anyway."

"Where are we?" Eliot asks.

"This is the Annex," Jake answers. "It's our base camp. In Portland," he adds. The Librarians may not be too bothered to have gone from the West Coast to the East Coast and back in seconds, but Eliot and Parker made the first trip the long way, and their friend Hardison is still in Boston.

"We're back in Portland?" Parker asks, amazed.

"I believe you are, Miss−" Jenkins starts.

Parker doesn't answer, still looking around her, so Eliot does it for her. "It's just Parker," he says. "My name's Eliot Spencer. Nice to meet you."

"This is Jenkins, Colonel Baird, Ezekiel Jones and Cassandra Cillian," Jake introduces.

"Why does your brother have a different last name?" Cassandra asks, looking between them with an expression Jake is very familiar with, cataloging the differences between their faces. She still looks angry, but willing to put it aside for the moment.

"Did you say Eliot Spencer?" Baird asks at the same moment.

Eliot turns toward her, frowning. There is no recognition in his face, but he looks ready to bolt.

"Eliot Spencer is your twin brother?" Baird growls to Jake, suddenly looking murderous. "I thought I knew your face from somewhere. I want _him_ out of here."

She advances on Eliot, menacingly. Jake almost expects Eliot to snap and hit her, but he only backs away, reaching for Parker to pull her behind him.

"What? What's going on?" Jake asks, but his brain is already working at full speed. He knows Eliot has been through, and done, things he won't talk about, in the years Jake believed he was dead. Eliot never gave him details, and even now Jake isn't sure he wants to know, but if Baird encountered him back then…

Jake doesn't even realize he's put himself between Eliot and Baird until Baird roughly pushes past him. He tries to resists her shove, but Eliot puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Eve Baird, NATO Counter-terrorism," Eliot says quietly, looking at the floor. "You weren't a Colonel, back then."

"You don't get to barge in here and pretend to the good guy," Baird spits.

"We did help you get rid of a magical Labyrinth," Parker says, looking serious for the first time since Jake met her. Her gaze is so intense Jake almost has to look away.

"It's okay," Eliot says. "I'll leave if you don't want me here. But Jake is still my brother. Please think of that before you decide to do anything."

Baird briefly looks at Jake, and he is thrown back by the fear in her eyes. "Just get out," she growls to Eliot and Parker.

"Fine," Parker says, finally. She looks around her for the exit, muttering under her breath so low that only Eliot can hear her. Eliot is still looking toward the floor, his shoulders tense and his face tight.

"Over here," Jake says, showing them out of the Annex and into the corridor. Baird tries to keep him and Jones from going with Eliot and Parker, but he throws her a challenging look. Whatever beef she has against him, Eliot's right. He's still Jake's brother, and Jake is not going to let him go this easily.

Parker turns around just before reaching the door. "Whatever you think Eliot did before, he's not the same anymore," she says to Baird. She looks like she wants to says more, but Eliot tugs on her sleeve and shakes his head. "Thanks," Jake hears him whisper.

"What was that about?" Jake asks once outside.

"Colonel Baird and I encountered each other before, back when I was...working a different job," Eliot says. "I'm sorry, Jake. This is gonna make things even more complicated."

"I'll talk to her. I'm sure she'll come around."

"Her anger is justified. I did things during those years… What we do now may not be legal, but it helps people in need. I used to be the one who hurt them, or worse. She has no reason to forgive me."

"What do you guys do now, anyway?" Jones asks when it becomes clear no one knows what to answer to Eliot's words. Jake is still trying to wrap his head around everything that's happened, and his reactions are slowed by overload. He'd forgotten Jones was even there.

"We're thieves!" Parker exclaims. "Well, more or less. We help people who've been let down by the legal channels, take down rich old men, that sort of things. Our company's called Leverage International."

"Leverage? Wait, you guys are from _Leverage_? You're _the _Parker?"

Parker suddenly looks smug and nods.

"You guys know each other too?" Jake asks, desperately trying to get it all straight in his head.

"They're basically legendary!" Jones says. "Why didn't you tell me your brother was part of the best crew in the world?"

"I didn't know!" Jake defends himself. "The best crew in the world?"

Now even Eliot looks sort of smug.

"Yes!" Jones exclaims. "Parker's, like, the best thief ever!"

"I thought you were the best thief ever," Jake tells Jones, annoyed. His sudden switch from his usual egotistic personality to fanboy mode is making Jake's head swim.

"Yeah, well, she might be the second best!"

"I beat you to the Hope Diamond," Parker says. "Twice. And I heard you almost got caught last month trying to steal the Dagger of Aqua'ba, which _we_ donated to the Geneva Museum four years ago."

"I heard you guys were based in Portland now," Jones evades.

"Yes," Eliot says. "Speaking of which, we probably shouldn't stay here. Baird might decide she wants to arrest me right now after all."

"This is the St. Johns Bridge, right?" Parker asks, looking up the anchorage. "Should we call a cab or something?"

"No, I'll drive you, I've got my pickup out back," Jake says.

"I'll try to talk to Baird for you, okay?" Jones tells him, uncharacteristically quietly.

"Why would you do that?" Jake asks, genuinely surprised.

"Family's important, man. And if what I've heard is right, your brother really has changed. Neither of you deserve this."

"Thank you," Jake murmurs back before Jones slips past in the Annex's doors.

* * *

There are two chapters left to this story. I'm not sure when the updates will be, because I'm going away on vacation for a couple of weeks, but hopefully I'll still be able to post.

I hope you liked this chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

Eliot comes clean. It's...not easy.

* * *

"Jake, there's something you need to know," Eliot says once they're settled at a table in the pub he had Jake drive them to. He apparently co-owns it, and the young waitress who serves them their beer is clearly on good terms with him. Parker has just left to go call Hardison, who is still in Boston waiting for news.

"Yes?"

Eliot doesn't seem to know where to start. He's not looking at Jake, his eyes on his beer instead. There is so much apprehension in his face that Jake freezes. Whatever it is, he's not going to like it.

They have fifteen years of not-so-good news to catch up on.

Eliot seems to struggle with words for a moment before he throws his hand in the air in a "what the hell" move and takes something out of his jacket pocket. Jake really doesn't want to recognize the folded white and red object, but he does.

"What−" he starts.

"I should have told you before, but I just… I couldn't, over the phone, especially at first. And later, it didn't seem as important. We weren't supposed to see each other again."

Jake barely manages to make sense of his words, still trying to understand.

"You're−" he starts, and stumbles over the words.

"I'm blind, yes," Eliot says.

Jake can feel himself go pale, as his emotions catch up with his brain. He closes his eyes, then opens them again to really look at Eliot. Eliot hasn't met his eyes since they found each other, but then neither of them was ever good at making eye contact.

He wants to retch.

"What happened?" he croaks out when he feels he can speak again.

"Just one blow to the head too many," Eliot says. "Optical nerve trauma."

"Gosh," Jake lets out. He realizes he's still staring and turns away, only for the thought to come to him that his brother can't see him stare, anyway.

Then he beats himself up for thinking it makes a difference. This is messed up.

He puts a hand over his mouth, nausea washing over him again. It's the shock talking, he knows, but that doesn't make it better.

"It's been almost ten years, Jake. I'm okay with it."

"_Ten_ years?" Jake chokes out.

Eliot has been blind for ten years and he never knew. It doesn't seem possible, but it's true that they have only talked over the phone. That Eliot hid this from him…

Ten years would put them only months after Eliot first called him out of the blue to tell him he was alive. Jake can remember how tense, resentful these first conversations were. It took them years to start really talking to each other again.

Jake can almost pinpoint the moment Eliot started sounding so depressed, so pained over the phone Jake almost bullied him into giving up his location, and hopped into the first plane out. Maybe he should have. Because it looks like he let Eliot go through hell alone.

"I know I should have told you," Eliot says. Jake nods almost automatically, guilt and resentment both tearing at his gut. "It's just… Back then, it felt like my whole life was collapsing on itself, like I was trapped in my own body, and I guess I needed something to stay the same. Those phone calls with you…they were that, for a while."

Jake swallows back a sob. "I can understand that, but… God, El, this is so much to take in."

"I know," Eliot breathes out. "I really am sorry."

"No, I am," Jake says sadly. "I wish I'd been there. I wish−"

"I didn't want you there, Jake," Eliot interrupts him. He reaches out and fumbles a little to find Jake's hand on the table. Gripping his wrist tightly, reveling in the physical closeness they haven't had in twenty years, Jake can't help but wonder how he missed Eliot's blindness, the last few hours.

Eliot's blind. The sentence is stuck in a loop in his head, and it feels like a knife to his chest every time.

Eliot who passes as sighted almost perfectly, the way he's always passed as neurotypical almost perfectly. There were clues, that Jake can see now that he knows what to look for, in the way Eliot hung onto his or Parker's elbow, or how he didn't ever look around him, even in the beautiful room of the Annex. But how did he manage to fight off and incapacitate five trained security guards by himself?

"That fight−" Jake starts, breaking the silence that has installed between them, but he trails off when his voice catches.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you," Eliot says. "You scared me. I can fight almost as well as I did before, but it's a lot harder to keep track of multiple people, so I didn't hear you come out. Parker knows how to let me know what she's doing, but you surprised me and that can be dangerous."

"That's okay," Jake says, trying to take in the information. "I was gonna say you were amazing."

Eliot smiles. "A bit sloppy, but to be fair, I was distracted. You know, seeing my brother after fifteen years, having to beat a magical maze, all that."

Jake lets out a small laugh. This tone is familiar, the one most of their phone calls over the last few years have taken. It's better than the raw pain and the knot in his throat.

"So, you finally got out of Oklahoma, uh?" Eliot says, keeping the lightness in his voice. Jake staying in their hometown, working in the family business, has long been a subject of tension between them.

"Yeah," Jake says. He proceeds to tell Eliot a somewhat sugarcoated version of Lamia's appearance in his favorite rodeo bar, and Baird bringing him into the Library. He can feel the tension and nausea seep out of his body a little as he relaxes. He insists on the dream job opportunity more than on the obscure magical cult trying to kill him, but Eliot is attentive throughout and clearly doesn't miss the dangerous parts.

"I could tell you that this job is too dangerous, but that would be hypocritical of me, wouldn't it?" Eliot says when he's done with his tale. "But this magic, it ain't something worth messing with, Jake."

"I'm an adult, El. I can make my own decisions," Jake says.

"I know. Sorry, you might be the big brother, but I'll always worry about you. But I know this is what you always dreamed of, so I won't pester you about it."

The edge in Eliot's voice almost makes Jake wince. Somehow, in ten years of monthly phone calls, they have mostly avoided talking about their life choices, and all the ways their childhood dreams have gone out the wind.

Ever since Eliot left, and Jake stayed behind.

It looks that they've hidden so much from each other that Jake wonders what was real, in those conversations. He has his fair share of things he didn't tell, too. The feelings, the emotions as they talked about their childhood were never faked, but was anything else true?

* * *

Parker comes back downstairs before Eliot has finished his beer.

"Hardison's coming back with the next plane with our stuff and he wants a word with you," she says.

They could have discussed things over the comms, but Eliot took his out when things got complicated with Colonel Baird, because Hardison's uncomprehending voice in his ear became too much to handle. Parker likes video calls better than the comms, and they don't even know how the magical trip through the Labyrinth and across the country may have affected their earpieces.

"Sure, I'll call him later," Eliot says, knowing Hardison is probably not too happy to have been left behind.

"Don't wait too long, he'll be on the plane in a couple of hours," Parker says, sitting down beside him.

Eliot tries to shake himself out of the bubble he and Jake have been in during their discussion. They have been silent for a while now, ever since they ran out of things to say that won't reopen old wounds, so Eliot has been concentrating on the little noises Jake makes, drinking his beer and shifting in his seat. All the things he doesn't know about his brother anymore. The things he never needed to know, before, because he could _see_ Jake.

"You two really look alike," Parker says dreamily, taking the seat beside him.

Eliot swallows. He knows she doesn't mean anything by it, but it hits him, suddenly.

He can't see the resemblance anymore.

However used he has become of his blindness, Eliot never fully imagined what it would feel like, seeing his brother again and not_ seeing _him_._ He fantasized many times, at the beginning, about having Jake close, but he never really thought about what it would be like.

And God, it hurts.

He can still come up with a picture of Jake's face, the last time they saw each other, if he concentrates very hard. He can come up with a picture, less detailed, of his own face in the mirror ten years ago. But when Jake talks and Eliot can hear a smile in his voice, there is no image to associate it with. However much he concentrates, the once familiar laughing face doesn't come before his mind's eyes.

And Jake probably doesn't look much like the face he does remember, however vaguely, after fifteen years.

Eliot never expected that.

The grief strikes him hard. It's more about the wasted years than about his lack of sight, because he has made his peace with that long ago, but it feels eerily similar to the punch in the gut mixed with frustration he used to get at the beginning, every time he was faced with something he would never do again. It's more sadness than anger now, but the knot is deep and constricting.

Telling Jake about his blindness, hearing the concern and the pain in his voice, and now the tentativeness, is as bad as he imagined. Eliot carefully didn't elaborate on how he lost his sight, because there's nothing he wants to talk about _less_ than the two-month captivity, or his year-long stay in rehab right now. Jake didn't ask. They've become very good, over the last ten years, at not asking.

Instead, he raises his glass toward his brother, in an unspoken toast to their reunion, and Jake clinks it with his own glass. With only a short latency, a third glass joins the party, and Eliot realizes from the commotion that Parker has stolen a glass from the closest table to toast them and put it right back. He smiles at her in amusement. Trust Parker to diffuse a melancholy situation.

"So you've met Parker and Hardison," he tells Jake. "Tell me about your coworkers."

Jake still seems shaken, but he does his best to sound casual, shifting in his chair. "Well, I don't know them that well yet. Baird is our Guardian, so her job is to protect us, and she didn't want to let us out in the field until we could hold our own in a fight. I hope she calms down about you, 'cause she's usually great. A bit overprotective, but really nice."

"She'll come around, I think," Eliot says. "If she doesn't, I'll just avoid your workplace and we should be fine."

"We'll see," Jake answers with a hint of sadness. "Jenkins is the Library's Caretaker. He grumbles a lot about us being in his way, but he's been alone for a very long time. I think he's getting used to having us here. He's the one who built the Back Door. The head Librarian is Flynn Carsen, you haven't met him, but that guy's really something else. He's got so much knowledge about everything, and he's a genius at what he does. Barmy, but a genius."

"Kinda like you?" Eliot smiles.

"Er, in another league entirely, but I suppose," Jake says.

"You mean he's autistic too?" Parker asks.

Jake turns his head so fast that Eliot can hear his neck crack. "What?"

"Parker−" Eliot starts.

"Don't worry, Eliot told me you were like us years ago," she interrupts him.

"I thought you didn't know about me?" Jake frowns.

"I knew Eliot had a brother, I just didn't know you were twins."

"Oh," Jake says. "Fair enough. Yeah, Flynn's probably autistic. Cassandra too. That's part of why this job seemed so wonderful, 'cause meeting them...it felt like coming home."

"Seemed?" Eliot repeats.

"Well, um, that's a bit of a long story. Cassandra−you heard us fight."

"I did. What was that about?"

"She sold us out. I trusted her and she betrayed us."

"What did she do?" Parker asks. "Was it a Sophie-betrayal or a Sterling-betrayal?"

"What?" Jake asks, confused.

"Parker, Jake doesn't know Sophie, and certainly not Sterling," Eliot says. "Just let him explain."

"Fine," Parker says.

So Jake tells them the whole story, piece by piece. Eliot can't say he blames Jake for not wanting to trust Cassandra again. He once did the same to Sophie, for similar reasons, and they'd been working together for a whole year by then. Trust never came easily to the Stone boys, and little in their life since has made them change their minds.

But he can also painfully understand where Cassandra is coming from, in a way Jake probably can't. Eliot knows intimately what it's like to have your own body betray you. The promise of a cure−some days there are few prices Eliot wouldn't pay for the pain to go away.

He doesn't say anything, though, just nods in the right places and commiserates.

"So this is a Sophie-betrayal," Parker comments when Jake is done.

"What does that mean?" Jake asks.

"It means her heart's in the right place," Eliot says. "Sophie once conned our crew on a job, and the consequences were a little worse than she'd expected. We forgave her. Eventually."

"Yeah," Jake says non-concomitantly. "We'll see about that."

_I take my responsibilities seriously,_ Jake said over the phone. Eliot doesn't know what Cassandra told him, but that sentence stuck in his head. Does Jake still see Eliot leaving him to enlist as a betrayal? Or worse, letting him believe for nearly four years that he was dead?

"What about Ezekiel Jones?" he asks instead of saying what's on his mind.

"He's a good thief," Parker says with a slight disdain in her voice.

"He's obnoxious," Jake says. "Never takes anything seriously. I don't know how I've put up with him for this long." But there's none of the darkness in his voice that he had talking about Cassandra. In fact, he sounds more fond than anything, and Eliot is reminded of him and Hardison, at the beginning.

He'll need to check out this Cassandra, check them all out, but to him it sounds like Jake has find a good team of his own.

* * *

So this was probably the most important and serious chapter of this story, though the next and final one isn't far behind. I'm better at angst and hurt/comfort than humor or fluff, so that's what you get.

Tell me if you liked it!


	5. Chapter 5

This is the last chapter of Those Left Behind, the end of this rather long day for everyone. Don't worry though, it's not the end of this AU.

* * *

Jake can't help staring when Eliot stands up and unfolds his white stick with a flick of his wrist. "I need to go call Hardison," he says. "Can you wait here? I'll be back in a few."

"Sure," Jake says, after he remembers again that nodding won't work.

Eliot has no trouble navigating the pub to the _Employee Only_ door in the back, but to Jake, seeing him using the cane still feels like a punch to the gut. Somehow, it makes it all real.

He doesn't make a sound, but he can't help the sudden tension in his body. Parker, who is still sitting at the table, notices.

"He's fine, you know," she says.

Jake closes his eyes to try to keep the tears in and bites hard on his lower lip.

"I can see that," he says when he can trust himself to speak again, and it's true. Sort of. "It's just...hard."

Parker makes a strange move with her arm toward him, like she wants to do something but stops herself. "I didn't know him, before," she says instead.

"Before he became−" Jake still can't say it.

Parker nods. "So, I don't know what he was like. But we've been a crew, and a family, for years and he's not−" She pauses, thinking. "He's the best at what he does. He protects us, and he can take any role we ask him to, and even mastermind some of our jobs. It doesn't matter, that he's blind."

Jake doesn't see how it can−not matter. Sight is too important, too necessary, isn't it? Then he thinks back on what he's seen today, Eliot jumping from a building and fighting armed men and smiling at his friends, and he reconsiders.

Maybe his brother really is fine. It's just going to take him a while to get used to it.

Jake shakes his head and looks at Parker. She's a hard one to figure out. One minute she's child-like and enthusiastic, and the next he can glimpse something else, a guarded side to her that's profound and lucid. She seems more confident in her own skin than any other autistic he's met, but there's darkness too, and suffering, buried just under the surface. She's like an open book−in a completely unknown language. Every time she opens her mouth Jake feels like he's discovering something new.

She's looking at him too, with an intensity in her eyes that make him squirm. Neither of them make eye contact, but it's not any less strong. She's assessing him. Jake hopes he will pass the test, because he's sure she can be a formidable enemy if she decided to be.

After a while, they both turn away.

"So, what is it like, working for a Library that's not there?" Parker asks a little awkwardly, like small talk is something she learned by heart. Jake thinks it's probably the case.

He keeps his eyes on the young waitress moving between the tables to answer. "We can access basically all the books from the Annex, so it's really like it was still there," he says.

They chatter for a while, about the wonders and the mysteries of the Library and the things Parker has seen and stolen. It's never so light as to count as small talk, not really, but they don't touch back on the subject of Eliot, of families or of teams.

When Eliot comes back, Jake's eyes are again glued to his white stick and the way he uses it to swipe the floor. People get out of his way, and the waitress scrambles to put a chair back in its place before he can reach it. Eliot smiles at her, like he knows exactly what she's just done, and murmurs a thank you. Jake's heart aches.

"I need to go back to the Annex," he says when Eliot reaches them. "It's getting late and my stuff is still there. And I want to talk to Baird."

"Come back," Eliot says. "Afterwards. My place is upstairs, I'll show you around."

* * *

Jake drives back to the brewpub two hours later even more shaken than he was before. Baird won't hear anything more about Eliot for now, Jones is fawning over Parker like a groupie, and Cassandra...

"_Why would you hide that?" _Cassandra asked him, about never telling his family and friends about his special interests. About his 'genius' brain. _"Family ain't ever easy,"_ Jake answered, and it oh so true but also not the full reason. The truth is that middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma is not a place where you can easily own up to being different. Not as a young man without a job, not as the son of the town's main employer. Intelligence is not a positive social marker there, but more than that, being autistic comes with stigma that can't be overcome. Jake knows, how much his parents tried to hide his difference, his diagnostic, how ashamed they were for failing to raise a normal son.

So he learned to hide. With therapies, at first, when Ma was alive and they had the money to afford it. By himself, later, under his father's fists, until Eliot started taking the blows for him. And when it got too much, when he crashed because maintaining his academic results and his neurotypical mask at the same time was impossible, he went back home and became the stupid cowboy who obeyed his father's every move.

And now that he's got a chance for the first time to be himself, to be surrounded by peers and use his strengths, he's come to the realization that he doesn't know how to.

"_Can you imagine? Meeting Flynn, meeting you, and Baird, and the...thief. Finding out about this Library. Finding people I could trust. Well, you know how that felt."_

Jake saw it, in Cassandra's eyes. The same wonder, the same relief that he felt. Like he told Eliot: it felt like coming home.

That day in Munich was possibly the best day of his life.

"_And then to have it broken..."_

And now that spark is gone, irremediably tainted. If he can't trust even the only people who can understand him, then there's no point in trying. The hope that he's finally found a place where he belonged has been squashed.

Jake just has some trouble keeping it buried.

"_It always ends badly, so…"_

And seeing Eliot again, finding out that he's blind…

He's been confused and hurting for the past few weeks, but now Jake just feels lost. It's too much at the same time. In some ways, however boring and frustrating his life in Oklahoma was, it was also the easy way out. The best way to avoid dealing with what he is.

With _who_ he is.

And he's been hiding for so long that he's afraid there might not be anything left behind the mask.

"_Old way's best."_

What is he going to do now?

"You want to come to my place upstairs?" Eliot asks, shaking Jake out of his thoughts.

Jake hesitates, long enough for Eliot to frown. He once trusted his brother with his life and more, but this Eliot is not the young man he said goodbye to fifteen years ago, the last time he was shipped out by the army, only weeks before their father was given a folded flag. This Eliot is harder, rougher around the edges.

"Jake?" Eliot says with a frown.

Jake stands up. "Coming," he says, trying to keep his voice as light as possible.

He follows Eliot up the stairs and into a large, minimalist apartment. Jake looks around him curiously. Everything is neatly organized. There are no decorations on the walls, and each piece of furniture is carefully positioned and devoid of clutter. It looks nothing like the bedroom they used to share at home, full of posters and books and random trinkets.

It looks nothing like his brother.

Jake's own place looks like a stereotypical academic bachelor's apartment, a mess of scattered books and papers and comfortable armchairs. If he had to guess, he would have pegged Eliot for low tables full of sports magazines, hand-weights lying around and a huge flat-screen TV. Not this perfect and impersonal living room.

But then, the last time they saw each other, they were barely more than teenagers.

Eliot senses Jake's surprise.

"There's very little point in putting up decorations I can't see. I keep my stuff organized so I know where everything is. And to avoid tripping on things."

Jake almost nods, then remembers there's no point and he winces instead.

"It's just…not what I expected," he chokes out. He's choking on too many words, tonight. It's hard to tell, which of the words in his head are okay to say and which aren't. He's still reeling with the events of the days, there are so many loose threads that need to be taken care of that his head swims and…

And Eliot's blind.

Fuck.

Jake doesn't realize he's leaning against the wall, swallowing sobs, until Eliot is at his side, hovering but not quite touching him. He remembers, then, that Jake doesn't like to be touched when everything hurts, inside. How it burns him, sometimes.

"Jake? What's wrong?"

It might not burn today, though. Jake experimentally takes the hand Eliot is offering, and it's alright. It's better, really. If he doesn't touch Eliot, then Eliot might disappear again.

"Sorry," he says, hating how weak his voice sounds. "I didn't mean to−"

He really didn't. He'd planned to hold it together until he got back to his place and crash there, when he'd have been alone. But seeing this apartment somehow made things real.

This isn't how he wants his brother to see him, for the first time in fifteen years.

Eliot looks like he doesn't know whether to be relieved or pained. Well, he mostly looks blank, but Jake has always been good at deciphering his body language. It's in the way his hand bounces softly on his thigh. In the slight tilt of his head. That hasn't changed.

"Come on," Eliot hoists him up and takes him over to the large leather couch. This looks like Eliot, right there. It might not be the right color −it's a dull brown− but he's always liked his leather. It looks expensive, and it's really comfortable.

Jake absentmindedly strokes the armrest, letting it settle him down a bit.

"Is it about me?" Eliot asks quietly after a bit.

"I−" Jake starts, but he chokes on another sob. It won't stop. He's trying to tell his body to calm down, but the tears keep falling down his cheeks.

"I know it's a shock," Eliot says. "But I don't know what to do. I couldn't hide it if we're going to keep seeing each other−"

"Is that what you want? You want us to see each other again?"

"Of course I do. Jake, I didn't stay away for so long because I wanted to."

"Didn't you?" Jake asks. It comes out far more bitter than he intended. "You couldn't see me once in fifteen years?"

Eliot sighs. "Would once have been enough?"

"No. Never. But it would have been something."

"I didn't want to put you in danger."

Jake looks down at his hands. "I would have taken danger over thinking you were dead," he says.

Eliot sighs again, but he doesn't try to justify himself.

"And now I finally see you again, and I discover...this. We spoke so many times, and yet I knew nothing about you−" Jake trails off again. If he's honest with himself, he's not angry at Eliot for not telling him. Not yet. He will be, maybe, when the shock wears off.

His anger isn't even anger. It's grief, Jake realizes. He feels like he's grieved for his twin, or for parts of him, a hundred times already. Yet it's still just as fresh as the day Eliot announced he was enlisting.

"I never really meant to hide it from you, Jake," Eliot says. "I'm sorry."

"Ten years worth of phone calls and you forgot to tell me you were blind?" Jake explodes, against his will. His bundled-up emotions have to go _somewhere._ "I don't know, Eliot, I just...I can't believe that."

"No, you're right, I didn't forget, not really. Back when…I was still adjusting, especially at first, I couldn't tell you. I knew that if I did, you'd probably try to find me, or you'd beat yourself up for not being able to help. And I didn't want you there."

"But why? It must have been _so_ hard on your own."

"Yes. It was bad. And...it might be terrible to say, but I just didn't want you to see me like this, to be as disgusted with what I had become as I was. I wasn't exactly being rational, but I needed _something_ in my life to still be as it was before, and you were that something."

In a way, it's far too relatable to Jake, who spent years hanging on to Eliot's phone calls while everything else crumbled. He never told Eliot that, either.

"I can...I can understand that," he says. "But later?"

"For a while after I got out of rehab, I thought about it a lot, but I didn't know how to tell you. I was once again living a life that I didn't want you to be part of, so I figured it wasn't that important. And we still weren't all that close, remember? We didn't tell each other much then. After that, I honestly forgot most of the time that you didn't know. It had become just a regular part of my life."

How can he forget, is the first question that pops up into Jake's mind. But Parker's words from earlier come back to him. _It doesn't matter, that he's blind._ Eliot has been living like this for ten years, and he's clearly proficient at it. _He's fine._

Jake can't quite believe it yet, but Eliot seems willing to give him the opportunity to see it for himself.

"Okay," he says, yawning. "I...I think I'll want to talk more about it later, but I'm spent. It's been a long day."

"Do you have a place here in Portland?" Eliot asks.

"Yeah. It's a mess because I had some stuff shipped from home, but it's not far."

"Okay. You should go get some sleep then."

There it is again, the tingle of fear that Eliot will just disappear again if Jake turns his back on him. Eliot must sense it, because he takes his phone out of his pocket.

"Hardison found your number earlier, so I'm sending you a text," he says. "You can call me if you need anything. I mean _anything._"

"Okay," Jake nods. "Can I...can I see you again? Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Eliot repeats. "We both have jobs, but you can come to the brewpub in the evening. I'll be there."

Jake had the urge to hug him, but he doesn't know how to do it without risking to surprise him. He makes an awkward move to stand up, gritting his teeth against the sudden fatigue-induced dizziness.

"You good till tomorrow?" Eliot asks, standing up after him.

Jake hums a yes, actual words escaping him. Eliot opens his arms, and he buries his face in his brother's shoulder.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he murmurs. "Phone calls weren't enough."

They both pretended it was for ten years.

"I know," Eliot murmurs. "I love you."

Jake can't say it back, so he grabs Eliot's hand and puts it on his, making the ASL sign. It's easier than words.

* * *

A huge thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, subscribed, kudoed, or just read from the shadows. I love you all so much.

This isn't the end of this AU, so don't forget to subscribe to the series (and not this story) if you want to be notified when there is more. I have a lot of unconnected snippets and no complete story, but I hope to be able to post something new soon-ish anyway. It will either be a follow-up to this story, or something set early in Leverage, I'm working on both.

I hope you enjoyed this story! I'd love to know what you liked most, what you would like to see in this AU (can be character development, specific episode tag of either show, etc), anything you want to say!

If you want to keep in touch and get updates, I'm over on Tumblr at theemmaarthur.


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